The present invention relates to a process for the conversion of light hydrocarbons that are typically volatile at standard conditions of temperature and pressure into hydrocarbons that are readily transportable at standard conditions.
During the course of crude oil recovery from oil wells, much light material such as methane, ethane, propane, and the like hydrocarbons are also recovered. Quite often, the amounts of these materials produced along with the difficulty in transporting these materials to a market by pipeline or vessel results in these valuable materials being flared as waste gasses or reinjected back into the well. One approach that has been taken to eliminate this problem is to convert these volatile, low molecular weight hydrocarbons into higher molecular weight hydrocarbons which are readily transportable via the crude pipelines to markets. One such process for upgrading light hydrocarbons is the dehydrocyclodimerization process.
The dehydrocyclodimerization process produces a highly aromatic product from a feedstock comprising C.sub.2 -C.sub.6 aliphatic hydrocarbons. Two relatively significant by-product streams comprising hydrogen, and C.sub.1 -C.sub.2 hydrocarbons are also produced. In remote areas of the world and in the absence of refinery processes requiring hydrogen, the hydrogen and light hydrocarbon by-products must be disposed of typically by burning. Therefore, a process which maximizes the amount of transportable products obtained from a light volatile hydrocarbon feed while minimizing the production of unusable light by-products is highly desirable.